These yearly visits to the Crimea were diversified with holiday voyages
on the _Standert_, and visits to relatives and close friends in various
countries. In 1910 their Majesties visited Riga and other Baltic ports
where they were royally welcomed, afterwards voyaging to Finnish waters
where they received as guests the King and Queen of Sweden. This was an
official visit, hence attended with considerable ceremony, exchange
visits of the Sovereigns from yacht to warship, state dinners and
receptions. At one of these dinners I sat next the admiral of the
Swedish fleet, who was much depressed because during the royal salute to
the Emperor one of his sailors had accidentally been killed.
In the autumn of 1910 the Emperor and Empress went to Nauheim, hoping
that the waters would have a beneficial effect on her failing health.
They left on a cold and rainy day and both were in a melancholy state,
partly because of separation from the beloved home, and partly because
of the quite apparent weakness of the Empress. On her account the
Emperor showed himself deeply disturbed. “I would do anything,” he said
to me, “even to going to prison, if she could only be well again.” This
anxiety was shared by the whole household, even by the servants who
stood in line on the staircase saying their farewells,
[Illustration: COMING IN AT YALTA, THE CRIMEA, 1911. THE EMPEROR, GRAND
DUCHESSES OLGA AND ANASTASIE, MME. VIROUBOVA AND OFFICERS OF THE YACHT
_STANDERT_. Photograph by the Empress.]
[Illustration:
THE EMPEROR, GRAND DUCHESSES OLGA AND MARIE STROLLING THROUGH
HOMBURG IN 1910. THE EMPEROR OUT OF UNIFORM WAS ALMOST SAFE FROM
RECOGNITION.
]
kissing the shoulder of the Emperor and the gloved hand of the Empress.
I heard almost daily from Frieberg, where the family were stopping,
letters from the Emperor, the Empress, and the children, telling me of
their daily life. At length came a letter from the Empress suggesting
that I join my father at Hombourg, not far distant, that we might have
opportunity for occasional meetings. As soon as I arrived I telephoned
the château at Frieberg, and the next day a motor car was sent to fetch
me. I found the Empress improved in health but looking thin and tired
from the rather rigorous cure. The Emperor, in his civilian clothes,
looked unfamiliar and strange, but he wore the conventional citizen’s
garb because he as well as the Empress wished to remain as far as
possible private persons. When the health of the Empress permitted she,
with Olga and Tatiana, enjoyed going unattended to Nauheim, walking
unnoticed through the streets, and gazing admiringly into shop windows
like ordinary tourists. Once the Emperor and the young Grand Duchesses
motored over to Hombourg and for a short hour walked about quite happily
unobserved. Only too soon, however, the Emperor was recognized and our
whole small party was obliged to flee precipitously before the gathering
crowds and the ever enterprising news photographers. On some of our
outings the Emperor was more fortunate. Once when we were wandering
along a country road on the outskirts of Hombourg a wagon passing us
dropped suddenly into the road a heavy box. The carrier, try as he
would, could not succeed in lifting the box back to its place until the
Emperor went forward and, exerting all his strength, helped the man out
of his difficulty. The carrier thanked his Majesty with every expression
of respect and gratitude, recognizing him as a gentleman but never
dreaming, of course, of his exalted station. To my expressions of amused
enjoyment of the situation the Emperor said to me gravely: “I have come
to believe that the higher a man’s station in life the less it becomes
him to assume any airs of superiority. I want my children to be brought
up in this same belief.”
Soon after this I returned to Russia to visit my sister, who had just
borne her first baby, a little girl named for the Grand Duchess Tatiana,
who acted as godmother for the child. My stay was not long, as letters
from the Empress called me to Frankfort in order to be near her. On my
arrival at Frankfort a surprise awaited me in the form of an invitation
from the Grand Duke Ernest of Hesse to stay with his Imperial guests at
his castle. At the castle gates I was welcomed by Mme. Grancy, the
charming hofmistress of the Hessian Court, and by Miss Kerr, a bright
and clever English girl, maid of honor to Princess Victoria. Miss Kerr
took me at once to my apartments, near her own, and I quickly made
myself at home. That night at dinner I sat between the Emperor and our
host, the Grand Duke of Hesse. The company, which was most
distinguished, included Prince Henry of Prussia, who that evening
happened to be in rather a disagreeable mood, Princess Irene, Princess
Victoria of Battenberg, and her beautiful daughter Princess Louise,
Prince George of Greece, and the two semi-invalid sons of Prince and
Princess Henry. The Empress was not present, being excused on account of
her cure. Besides, it was understood that the Empress almost never
appeared at state dinners.
The Grand Duke of Hesse I have always liked extremely both for his
amiable disposition and for his many accomplishments. He was, and is
still, an unusually gifted musician, a painter, and an artist craftsman
seriously interested in the great pottery in Darmstadt, where his own
designs are used. He has always been a man of liberal social ideals and
his popularity among the people of Hesse not even the German Revolution
has been powerful enough to overthrow. His wife, Princess Eleanor, when
I knew her, was dignified and gracious and gifted with a genuine talent
for dress. Prince Henry of Prussia, brother of the Kaiser and
brother-in-law of the Empress, was a tall and handsome man, but inclined
to be--let us say--temperamental. At times he was overbearing and very
satirical, and at others friendly and charming. His wife was a small
woman, simple in manner and of a kindly, unselfish nature. Princess
Alice, daughter of Princess Victoria of Battenberg and wife of Prince
Andrew of Greece, was a beautiful woman but unhappily quite deaf.
The Castle of Frieberg, which stands on a high hill overlooking a low
valley and the little red-roofed town of Nauheim, is an ancient
structure not particularly attractive either inside or out. There was
nothing much for Grand Duke Ernest’s guests to do in the way of
amusement except to walk and drive. Of the Empress I saw rather less
than we had planned, but sometimes late in the evenings the Emperor, the
Empress, and myself met for Russian tea and for familiar talks before
bedtime.
In October or November their Majesties returned to Tsarskoe Selo, the
Empress greatly benefited by her cure. How happy we were to be once more
at home, the Empress in her charming boudoir hung with mauve silk and
fragrant with fresh roses and lilacs, I in my own little house which I
dearly loved even though the floors were so cold. The opal-hued boudoir
of the Empress, where we spent a great deal of our time, was a lovely,
quiet place, so quiet that the footsteps of the children and the sound
of their pianos in the rooms above were often quite audible. The Empress
usually lay on a low couch over which hung her favorite picture, a large
painting of the Holy Virgin asleep and surrounded by angels. Beside her
couch stood a table, books on the lower shelf, and on the upper a
confusion of family photographs, letters, telegrams, and papers. It was
undeniably a weakness of the Empress that she was not in the least
systematic about her correspondence. Intimate letters, it is true, she
answered promptly, but others she often left for weeks untouched. About
once a month Madeleine, the principal maid of the Empress, would invade
the boudoir and implore her mistress to clear up this heap of neglected
correspondence. The Empress usually began by begging to be left alone,
but in the end she always gave in to the importunities of the invaluable
Madeleine. The Empress of course had a private secretary, Count
Rostovseff, but it was one of her peculiarities that she preferred to
handle her letters and telegrams before her secretary, and he seemed to
accustom himself with ease to her dilatory ways.
It would be difficult to imagine two people more widely different on
points of this kind than Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna. Their
private apartments were very close together, the Emperor’s study,
billiard and sitting room and his dressing room with a fine swimming
bath, almost adjoining the apartments of the Empress. The big
antechamber to the study, well furnished with chairs and tables and many
books and magazines, looked out on a court, and here people who had
business with the Emperor waited until they were summoned to his private
room. The study was a perfect model of orderliness, the big writing
table having every pen and pencil exactly in its place. The large
calendar also with appointments written carefully in the Emperor’s own
hand was always precisely in its proper place. The Emperor often said
that he wanted to be able to go into his study in the dark and put his
hand at once on any object he knew to be there. The Emperor was equally
particular about the appointments of his other rooms. The dressing table
in the white-tiled bathroom, separated from the sitting room by a
corridor and a small staircase, was as much a model of neatness as the
study table, nor could the Emperor have tolerated valets who would not
have kept his rooms in a condition of perpetual good order. Of course
the ample _garderobes_, where the gowns, wraps, hats, and jewels of the
Empress and the innumerable uniforms of the Emperor were kept, were
always in order because they were in the care of experienced servants
and were rarely if ever visited by others than their responsible
guardians.
The Emperor’s combined billiard and sitting room was not very much used
because the Emperor spent most of his leisure hours in his wife’s
boudoir. But it was in the billiard room that the Emperor kept his many
albums of photographs, records of his reign. These albums bound in green
with the Imperial monogram, contained photographs taken over a period of
twenty years. The Empress had her own albums full of equally priceless
records, priceless from the historian’s standpoint at any rate, and each
of the children had their own. There was an expert photographer attached
to the household whose only duty was to develop and print these
photographs, which were, in almost every case, mounted by the royal
photographer’s own hand. This work used to be done, as a rule, on rainy
days, either in the palace or on board the _Standert_. The Emperor, as
usual, was neater about this work of pasting photographic prints than
any other member of the household. He could not endure the sight of the
least drop of glue on a table. As might be expected of so orderly a
person the Emperor was slow about almost everything he did. When the
Empress wrote a letter she did it very quickly, holding her portfolio on
her knees on her _chaise longue_. When the Emperor wrote a letter it was
a matter of hours before it was completed. I remember once at Livadia
the Emperor retiring to his study at two o’clock to write an important
letter to his mother. At five, the Empress afterwards told me, the
letter remained unfinished.
The private life of the Imperial Family in these years before the War
was quiet and uneventful. The Empress never left her room before noon,
it being her custom, since her illness, to read and write propped up on
pillows on her bed. Luncheon was at one o’clock, the Emperor, his
aide-de-camp for the day, the children, and an occasional guest
attending. After luncheon the Emperor went at once to his study to work
or to receive visitors. Before tea time he usually went for a brisk walk
in the open.
At half past two I came to the Empress, and if the weather was fine and
she well enough, we went for a drive or a walk. Otherwise we read or
worked until five, when the family tea was served. Tea was a meal in
which there was never the slightest variation. Always appeared the same
little white-draped table with its silver service, the glasses in their
silver standards, and for the rest simply plates of hot bread and butter
and a few English biscuits. Never anything new, never any surprises in
the way of cakes or sweetmeats. The only difference in the Imperial tea
table came in Lent, when butter and even bread made with butter
disappeared, and a small dish or two of nuts was substituted. The
Empress often used gently to complain, saying that other people had much
more interesting teas, but she who was supposed to have almost unlimited
power, was in reality quite unable to change a single deadly detail of
the routine of the Russian Court, where things had been going on almost
exactly the same for generations. The same arrangement of furniture in
the state rooms, the same braziers of incense carried by footmen in the
long corridors, the same house messengers in archaic costumes of red
and gold with ostrich-feathered caps, and for all I know the same plates
for hot bread and butter on the same tea table, were traditions going
back to Catherine the Great, or Peter, or farther still perhaps.
Every day at the same moment the door opened and the Emperor came in,
sat down at the tea table, buttered a piece of bread, and began to sip
his tea. He drank every day two glasses, never more, never less, and as
he drank he glanced over his telegrams and newspapers. The children were
the only ones who found tea time at all exciting. They were dressed for
it in fresh white frocks and colored sashes, and spent most of the hour
playing on the floor with toys kept especially for them in a corner of
the boudoir. As they grew older needlework and embroidery were
substituted for the toys, the Empress disliking to see her daughters
sitting with idle hands.
From six to eight the Emperor was busy with his ministers, and he
usually came directly from his study to the eight o’clock family dinner.
This was never a ceremonial meal, the guests, if any, being relatives or
intimate friends. At nine the Empress, in the rich dinner gown and
jewels she always wore, even on the most informal evenings, went to the
bedroom of the Tsarevitch to hear him say his prayers and to tuck him
into bed for the night. The Emperor worked until eleven, and until that
hour the Empress, the two older Grand Duchesses, and I read, had a
little music, or otherwise passed the time. Perhaps it is worth
recording that bridge, or in fact any other card games, we never played.
Nobody in the family cared at all for cards, and only a little, once in
a while, for dominoes. At eleven the evening tea was served, and after
that we separated, the Emperor to write his diary for the day, the
Empress and the children to bed and I for home. All his life the Emperor
kept a daily record of events, but like all the private papers of the
Imperial Family, the diaries were seized by the Revolutionary leaders
and probably (although I still hope to the contrary) destroyed. The
diaries of Nicholas II, apart from any possible sentimental
associations, should be possessed of great historical value.
Monotonous though it may have been, the private life of the Emperor and
his family was one of cloudless happiness. Never, in all the twelve
years of my association with them, did I hear an impatient word or
surprise an angry look between the Emperor and the Empress. To him she
was always “Sunny” or “Sweetheart,” and he came into her quiet room,
with its mauve hangings and its fragrant flowers, as into a haven of
rest and peace. Politics and cares of state were left outside. Never
were we allowed to speak of them. The Empress, on her part, kept her own
troubles to herself. Never did she yield to the temptation to confide in
him her perplexities, the foolish and spiteful intrigues of her ladies
in waiting, nor even lesser troubles concerning the education and
upbringing of the children. “He has the whole nation to think about,”
she often said to me. The only care she brought to the Emperor was the
ever precarious health of Alexei, but this the whole family constantly
felt, and it had to be spoken of very often. The Imperial Family was
absolutely united in love and sympathy. I like to remember of the
children, who adored their parents, that they never felt the slightest
resentment of their mother’s attachment for me. Sometimes I think the
little Grand Duchess Marie, who especially worshipped her father, felt a
little jealous when he invited me, as he often did, to accompany him on
walks in the palace gardens. This may be imagination, and at all events
the child’s slight jealousy never interfered with our friendship.
I think the Emperor liked to walk with me because he had need to talk to
someone he trusted of purely personal cares which troubled his mind and
which he could share with few. Some of these cares were of old origin,
but had never been forgotten. I remember once he began to tell me,
almost without any preface, of the dreadful disaster which attended his
coronation, a panic, induced by bad management of the police, in the
course of which scores of people were crushed to death. At the very hour
of this fatal accident the coronation banquet took place, and the
Emperor and Empress, despite their grief and horror, were obliged to
take part in it exactly as though nothing had happened. The Emperor told
me with what difficulty they had concealed their emotions, often having
to hold their serviettes to their faces to hide their streaming tears.
One of the happiest memories of my life at Tsarskoe Selo were the
evenings when the Emperor, all cares past and present forgot, sat with
us in the Empress’s boudoir reading aloud from the work of Tolstoy,
Tourgenieff, or his favorite Gogol. The Emperor read extremely well,
with a pleasant voice and a remarkably clear enunciation. In the years
of the Great War, so full of anguish and apprehension, the Emperor found
relief in reading aloud amusing stories of Averchenko and Teffy, Russian
humorists who perhaps have not yet been translated into foreign tongues.
Before the War the Emperor was pictured far and wide as a cruel tyrant
deliberately opposed to the interests of his people, while the Empress
appeared as a cold, proud woman, a _malade imaginaire_, wholly
indifferent to the public good. Both of these pictures are cruelly
misrepresentative. Nicholas II and his wife were human beings, with
human faults and failings like the rest of us. Both had quick tempers,
not invariably under perfect control. With the Empress temper was a
matter of rapid explosion and equally sudden recovery. She was often for
the moment furiously angry with her maids whom too often she discovered
in insincerities and deceit. The Emperor’s anger was slower to arouse
and much slower to pass. Ordinarily he was the kindest and simplest of
men, not in the least proud or over-conscious of his exalted position.
His self-control was so great that to those who knew him little he often
appeared absent-minded and indifferent. The fact is he was so reserved
that he seemed to fear any kind of self-revealment. His mind was
singularly acute, and he should have used it more accurately to gauge
the characters of persons surrounding him. It was entirely within his
mental powers to sense the atmosphere of gossip and calumny that
surrounded the Court during the last years, and certainly it was within
his power to put a stop to idle and malicious talk. But it was rarely
possible to arouse him to its importance. “What high-minded person would
believe such nonsense?” was his usual comment. Alas! he little realized
how few were the really high-minded people who, in the last years of the
Empire, surrounded his person or that of the Empress.
Sometimes the Emperor found himself obliged to take cognizance of the
malicious gossip which made the Empress desperately unhappy and in the
end poisoned the minds of thousands of really well-meaning and loyal
Russians. Beginning as far back as 1909 the tide of treachery had begun
to rise, and one of the earliest of those responsible for the final
disaster, I regret to say, was a woman of the highest aristocracy, one
long trusted and affectionately regarded by the Imperial Family. Mlle.
Sophie Tutcheff, a protégée of the Grand Duchess Serge, and a lady who
was a general over-governess to the children, was perhaps the first of
all the intriguing courtiers of whom I have positive knowledge. Mlle.
Tutcheff belonged to one of the oldest and most powerful families in
Moscow, and she was strongly under the influence of certain bigoted
priests, especially that of her cousin, Bishop Vladimir Putiata, who for
ten years had lived in Rome as official representative of the Russian
Church. It was he, I firmly believe, who inspired in Mlle. Tutcheff her
antipathy to the Empress and her evil reports concerning the life of the
Imperial Family. Mlle. Tutcheff, either of her own accord or encouraged
by her relative, was continually opposed to what she called the English
upbringing of the Imperial children. She wished to change the whole
system, make it entirely Slav and free from any imported ideas.
Mlle. Tutcheff was, I believe, the first person to create what
afterwards became the international Rasputine scandal. At the time of
her residence in the palace at Tsarskoe Selo Rasputine’s influence had
scarcely been felt at all by the Emperor or Empress, although he was an
intimate friend of other members of the Romanoff family. But Mlle.
Tutcheff spread abroad a series of the most amazing falsehoods in which
Rasputine figured as a constant visitor and virtually the spiritual
guardian of the Imperial Family. I do not wish to repeat these stories,
but merely to give an idea of their preposterous nature I will say that
she represented Rasputine as having the freedom of the nurseries and
even the bedchambers of the young Grand Duchesses. According to tales
purported to have their origin with her, Rasputine was in the habit of
bathing the children and afterward talking with them, sitting on their
beds.
I do not think the Emperor believed all these rumors, but he did believe
that Mlle. Tutcheff was guilty of malicious gossip of his family, and he
therefore summoned her to his study and rebuked her severely, asking her
how she dared to spread idle and untrue stories about his children. Of
course she denied having done anything of the sort, but she admitted
that she had spoken ill of Rasputine. “But you do not know the man,”
protested the Emperor, “and in any case, if you had criticisms to make
of anyone known to this household you should have made them to us and
not to the public.” Mlle. Tutcheff admitted that she did not know
Rasputine, and when the Emperor suggested that before she spoke evil of
him it might be well for her to meet him she haughtily replied: “Never
will I meet him.”
For a short time after this Mlle. Tutcheff remained at Court, but being
a rather stupid and very obstinate woman, she continued her campaign of
intrigue. She managed to influence Princess Oblensky, long a favorite
lady in waiting, until she entirely estranged her from the Empress. She
even began to speak to the children against their own mother, until the
Empress, who felt herself powerless against the woman, actually refused
to visit the nurseries, and when she wanted her children near her sent
for them to come to her private apartments. Too well she knew the
Emperor’s extreme reluctance to dismiss any person connected with the
Court, and she waited in silent pain until the scandal grew to such
proportions that the Emperor could no longer ignore it. Then Mlle.
Tutcheff was summarily dismissed and sent back to her home in Moscow.
So powerful was the influence of the Tutcheff family that this incident
was magnified beyond all proper proportions, and the former
over-governess of the Imperial children was represented as a poor victim
of Rasputine, a man whom she had never seen and who probably never knew
of her existence. The last I ever heard of Mlle. Tutcheff, who, by the
way, was a niece of the esteemed poet Tutcheff, she was living in
Moscow, under the special protection of the Bolshevik Government. Her
cousin, the former Bishop Vladimir Putiata, I understand has for several
years been a great favorite of those Communists who have prosecuted
such brave and fearless opponents of church despoilment as the unhappy
Patriarch Tikhon and others.
Of the Emperor I think it ought to be said that his education, under his
governor, General Bogdanovitch, was calculated to weaken the will of any
boy and to encourage in Nicholas II his natural reserve and what might
be called indolence of mind. But this I know of him that after his
marriage he became much more resolute of temper and much more gentle of
manner than other members of his family. It is certain that he loved
Russia and the Russian people with his whole soul, and yet, under the
political system for centuries in force, he had often to leave to people
whom he knew only superficially many important details of government.
Unquestionably it was a fault of the Emperor that he was over-confident,
and only too ready to believe what was told him by people whom he
personally liked. He was impulsive in most of his acts and sometimes
made important nominations on the impression of a moment. It goes
without saying that many of his officials took advantage of this
overconfidence and sometimes acted in his name without his knowledge or
authority.
Only too well for her own happiness and peace of mind did the Empress
Alexandra Feodorovna understand her husband. She knew his kind heart,
his love for his country and his people, but she knew also how easily
influenced he could be by men in whom he reposed confidence. She knew
that too often his acts were governed by the last person he happened to
consult. But for all this I wish to say that the Emperor never appeared
to his friends as a weak man. He had qualities of leadership with very
limited opportunities to exercise those qualities. In his own domain he
was “every inch an Emperor.” The whole Court, from the Grand Dukes down
to the last petty official and intriguing maid of honor, recognized this
and stood in real awe of their Sovereign. I have a keen recollection of
an episode at dinner in which a certain young Grand Duke ventured to
utter an ill-founded grievance against a distinguished general who had
dared to rebuke his Highness in public. The Emperor instantly recognized
this as a mere display of temper and egoism, and his contempt and
indignation knew no bounds. He literally turned white with anger, and
the unfortunate young Grand Duke trembled before him like an offending
servant. Afterwards the still indignant Emperor said to me: “He may
thank God that the Empress and you were present. Otherwise I could not
have held myself in hand.” Towards the end of the Russian tragedy in
1917 the Emperor had learned to hold himself almost too well in hand, to
subdue and to conceal the commanding personality of which he was
naturally possessed. It would have been far better if he had used his
personality and his great charm of manner to offset the tide of intrigue
and revolution which in the midst of a world war overcame the Empire.
As long as I knew him, whether in the privacy of the palace at Tsarskoe
Selo, in the informal life of the Crimea, on the Imperial yacht, in
public or in private, I was always conscious of the strong personality
of the Emperor. Everybody felt it. I can instance one occasion at a
great reception of the Tauride Zemstvo when two men present were
deliberately resolved to behave in a disrespectful manner to the
Emperor. But the moment he entered the room these men found themselves
completely overpowered. Their manner changed and they showed in every
subsequent word and action their shame and regret. At one time a group
of Social Revolutionaries were able to put on a cruiser which the
Emperor was to visit a sailor charged with his Sovereign’s
assassination. But when the opportunity came the man literally could not
do the deed. For his “weakness” this poor wretch was afterwards murdered
by members of his party.
The character of the Empress was quite different from that of her
husband. She was less lovable to the many, and yet of a stronger fiber.
Where he was impulsive she was usually cautious and thoughtful. Where he
was over-optimistic she was inclined to be a bit suspicious, especially
of the weak and self-indulgent aristocracy. It was generally believed
that the Empress was difficult to approach, but this was never true of
sincere and disinterested souls. Suffering always made a strong appeal
to the Empress, and whenever she knew of anyone sad or in trouble her
heart was instantly touched. Few people, even in Russia, ever knew how
much the Empress did for the poor, the sick, and the helpless. She was a
born nurse, and from her earliest accession took an interest in
hospitals and in nursing quite foreign to native Russian ideas. She not
only visited the sick herself, in hospitals, in homes, but she
enormously increased the efficiency of the hospital system in Russia.
Out of her own private funds the Empress founded and supported two
excellent schools for training nurses, especially in the care of
children. These schools were founded on the best English models, and
were under the general supervision of the famous Dr. Rauchfuss and of
head nurse Miss Puchkine, a near relative of the great poet Puchkine. I
could enlarge at length on the many constructive philanthropies of the
Empress, paid for by herself, hospitals, homes, and orphanages, planned
in almost every detail by herself, and constantly visited and inspected.
After the Japanese War she built a _Hôtel des Invalides_, in which
hundreds of disabled men were taught trades. She also built a number of
cottages with gardens for wounded soldiers and their families, most of
these war philanthropies being under the supervision of a trusted
friend, Colonel the Count Shoulenbourg of the Empress’s favorite
Lancers.
The Empress possessed a heart and a mind utterly incapable of dishonesty
or deceit, consequently she could never tolerate either in other people.
This naturally got her heartily disliked by people of society to whom
deceit was a matter of long practice. Another quality condemned in the
Empress because entirely misunderstood, was her care as to expenses.
Brought up in the comparative poverty of a small German Court, the
Empress never lost the habit of a cautious use of money. Quite as in
private families, where economy is an absolute necessity, the clothing
of the young Grand Duchesses when outgrown by the elders were handed
down to the younger girls. In the matter of selecting gifts for guests,
for relatives, or at holidays for the suite, the Emperor simply
selected from the rich assortment sent to the palace objects which best
pleased him. The Empress, on the other hand, always examined the price
cards and considered before choosing whether the jewel or the fur or the
bijou, whatever it was, was worth what was asked for it. The difference
between the Emperor and the Empress in regard to money was a difference
in experience. The Emperor, all his life, had had everything he wanted
without ever paying a single ruble for anything. He never had any money,
never needed any money. I can recall but one solitary instance in which
the Tsar of all the Russias ever even felt the need of touching a kopeck
of his illimitable riches. It was in 1911 when their Majesties began to
attend services at the Feodorovsky Cathedral at Tsarskoe Selo. In this
church it was the custom to pass through the congregations alms basins
into which everyone, of course, dropped a contribution, large or small.
The Emperor alone was entirely penniless, and embarrassed by his unique
situation he made a representation to the proper authorities, after
which at exact monthly intervals he was furnished with four gold pieces
for the alms basin of the Feodorovsky Cathedral. If he happened to
attend an extra service he had to borrow his contribution from the
Empress.
But if the Emperor carried no money in his pockets it was well enough
known that he commanded vast sums, and it was characteristic of the
sycophants who surrounded him that he was constantly importuned for
“loans,” for money to help out gambling or otherwise impecunious
officers who, aware of the Emperor’s great love for the army, played on
it to their advantage. One day when the Emperor was taking his usual
brisk walk through the grounds before tea a young officer who had
managed to conceal himself in the shrubbery sprang out, threw himself on
his knees, and threatened to kill himself on the spot unless the Emperor
granted him a sum of money to clear the desperate wretch of some
reckless deed. The Emperor was frightfully enraged--but he sent the man
the money demanded.
The Empress had always handled money and knew quite well how to spend it
wisely. From the depths of her honest soul she despised the use of money
to buy loyalty and devotion. For a long time after my first formal
service as maid of honor, with the usual salary, I received from her
Majesty literally nothing at all. From my parents I had the income from
my dowry, four hundred rubles a month, a sum entirely inadequate to pay
the running expenses of my small establishment with its three absolutely
indispensable servants, and at the same time to dress myself properly as
a member of the Court circle. The Empress’s brother, Grand Duke Ernest
of Hesse, was one of the first of her intimates to point out to her the
difficulties of my position, and to suggest to her that I be given a
position at Court. The suggestion was not welcomed by Alexandra
Feodorovna. “Is it not possible for the Empress of Russia to have one
friend?” she cried bitterly, and she reminded her brother that her
relation and mine were not without precedent in Russia. The Empress
Dowager had a friend, Princess Oblensky; also the Empress Marie
Alexandrovna, wife of Alexander III, had in Mme. Malzoff an intimate
associate, and neither of these women had had any Court functions. Why
should she not cherish a friendship free from all material
considerations? However, after her brother and also Count Fredericks,
Minister of the Court, had pointed out to her that it was scarcely
proper that the Empress’s best friend and confidante should wear
made-over gowns and go home from the palace on foot at midnight because
she had no money for cabs, the Empress began to relent a little. At
first her change of attitude took the form of useful gifts bestowed at
Christmas and Easter, dress patterns, furs, gloves, and the like.
Finally one day she asked me to discuss with her the whole subject of my
expenses. Making me sit down with pencil and paper, she commanded me to
set forth a complete budget of my monthly expenditures, exactly what I
paid for food, service, light, fire, and clothing. The domestic budget,
apart from my small income, came to two hundred and seventy rubles a
month, and at the orders of the Empress I was thereafter furnished
monthly with the exact sum of two hundred and seventy rubles. It never
occurred to her to name the amount in round numbers of three hundred
rubles. Nor did it occur to me except as a matter of faint amusement. Of
course I was often embarrassed for money even after I became possessed
of this regular income, and even later when it was augmented by two
thousand rubles a year for rent, and it often wrung my heart to have to
say no to appeals for money. I knew that I appeared selfish and
hard-hearted. The truth was that I was simply impecunious.